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Rangers reveal injury update on pitcher who punched wall and broke hand

This Texas reliever's poor life choice has officially derailed his 2024 season.
Eric Cole
Eric Cole

Nolan Writin'

Texas Rangers v Houston Astros / Tim Warner/GettyImages

The Texas Rangers were already having enough trouble with injuries this year that weren't the result of total stupidity. Texas' injured list currently has Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Josh Sborz, Josh Jung, Justin Foscue, and Cody Bradford, among others, on it. In a lot of ways, the Rangers' current situation is what makes Brock Burke's injury so frustrating.

In the middle of April, Brock Burke came out of a game against the Astros and punched a wall in frustration. To the surprise of no one, the wall won and Burke broke his non-throwing hand.

While it was at least good that it was his non-throwing hand, a significant stint on the injured list was pretty much a formality once the fracture was confirmed.

The Rangers provided an update on Burke's injury over the weekend when it was revealed the pitcher had surgery to repair one of his metacarpal bones in his hand.

Rangers News: Brock Burke has surgery on hand after punching wall

At some point, guys will figure out that expressing frustration in this manner is a bad idea. In recent years, Phil Maton, Huascar Ynoa, Jarred Kelenic, and others have all found this out the hard way. While punching/kicking things and hurting yourself is too common to be immortalized among the game of baseball's weirdest injuries, it is still infuriating to have happen. Burke was placed on the 60-day IL which means it will be June, at the earliest, before he returns.

While Burke wasn't considered to be the guy the Rangers were going to use in the highest leverage of situations this year out of the bullpen, his loss is still substantial as he has averaged 50+ appearances the previous two seasons with decent results. Not to mention, Texas' relief corps is already banged up and Jose Leclerc has struggled mightily in 2024.

Not all the Rangers' bullpen news is bad. Josh Sborz should be back pretty soon and one of the Rangers' few offseason additions in Kirby Yates has been shoving this season. It still doesn't seem like Texas has quite enough bullpen depth to weather the long baseball season, though, and Burke's dumb injury is a big reason why.

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Eric Cole

Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.